Hoppers are a very common type of freight car and come in a variety of shapes, sizes and purposes. They can be open or covered. They can be made of steel or aluminum.
Open hoppers carry heavy bulk commodities which can be exposed to the weather. For unloading, the commodity will flow or pour through the hopper discharge chutes into underground pits.
Covered hoppers are designed to handle dry bulk commodities which require absolute protection against the weather. They have a permanent roof with hatches to facilitate loading. A hopper's interiors is shaped into bays (hoppers) with discharge doors which allow unloading from the bottom either by gravity, pneumatic (suction) or airslide functions. Airslide hoppers force air between the fabric lining and slope sheets of the car, loosening the product so that it flows easily through the outlets.
The ARR uses open hoppers to haul mainly coal, gravel and ballast while covered hoppers are mainly for cement, chemicals and grain. Here is an example of a hopper utilization plan.
Click here for the hopper roster. Also
check to see if they have any leased.
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| 14400 | 80 ton | 3 pocket, boxcar red, Pullman-Standard |
| 14700 | 70 ton | 3 pocket, black, ex-C&O cars |
| 14900 | 70 ton | MK ballast hoppers, boxcar red |
| 16000 | 100 ton | 4 pocket, 45 degree slope sheets, black |
| 16100 | 100 ton | 4 pocket, light blue, ex-AS&G |
| 16400 | 100 ton | 4 pocket aluminum |
| 7100 | 70 ton | ballast/coal doors, boxcar red |
| TNM 20000 | 100 ton | 4 pocket, rotary dump, black with 1-yellow end |
Click on the pictures below for a larger view and additional information.
| TNM 20000, 100 ton, 4 pocket, rotary dump. |  |
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As you know, I work on the "North-end" (Healy/Fairbanks). Although I have taken quite a few Hyundai (Seward) trains from Healy to Anchorage, I have never gone south of Anchorage with one. The only thing that comes to mind is "Yellow-Bands". The Seward Coal or "Hyundai" Trains and many of our gravel trains are made up largely of "TNM" series, 100 ton hoppers. If you don't know already, "TNM" series coal hoppers have one end painted yellow. This is because the knuckle on that end spins 360 degrees on a rounded drawbar. Down South (in your neck of the woods), many coal and gravel trains are unloaded 3 to 5 cars at a time by a section of track equipped with grabbers that physically holds the cars on a section of track and flips the TNM cars upside down while they are still attached to the train. This is a much quicker (and a more expensive) way to dump a train. We lease those hoppers for our coal and gravel operation but we don't have any "flipping" tracks up here, we simply use the doors in the bottom of them to dump them.
Anyway, TNM hoppers cannot be coupled with the yellow ends together because of the rounded drawbar. If you hooked them up with the yellow ends together, the knuckles could rotate to a horizontal position, causing the train to come apart in a curve. We try to keep all of the yellow bands facing one direction, either north or south to help keep this from happing when making trains. If they weren't, making up a train is aggravated because every time you came across yellow ends facing opposite directions, you have to either loop or wye the cars, or find a "non-TNM" series hopper to stick between them. If cars are ever looped or wyed during the unloading operation, then they would have to be looped or wyed again to get them in the same orientation for arrival in the Anchorage yard in case the train was to be broken up to build other gravel or coal trains.
Brett Brown
Alaska Railroad locomotive engineer
4/28/02
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ARR covered hopper at Alaska Mill and Feed. |
| MK ballast hopper. |  |
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New aluminum hopper with ARR herald. |
| Quad hopper with stencil lettering. |  |
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Quad hopper with large "Alaska". |
| ARR coal hopper |  |
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Old three bay ribbed hopper. These are nearly extint on the Alaska Railroad. |
| Ballast hopper with very rare large "Alaska" lettering. |  |
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Ballast hopper with normal "Alaska Railroad" lettering style. |
| A 54-ft. covered hopper with 3,700 cubic feet capacity, 6 round hatches at center, 3 bays and 3 outlets. |  |
| Bob Garner says, "These Ortner rapid discharge hoppers were leased for a while, but were not suitable for both coal and gravel and were returned." |  |
On 4/17/04 Jason Kuehn adds, "The Alaska Railroad leased
a string of these - 60 cars I think - from RailTex back before RailTex was
a shortline operating company and they were mostly into car leasing particularly
for the aggregates business.
These are Ortner (now Trinity Industries) rapid discharge cars designed primarily
for handling aggregates. They are the best car on the market for this type
of commodity. The 60 degree slopes sheets provide for a fast clean unloading
of commodities like sand and gravel without using a car shaker. Unfortunately
the ARR the gravel season only lasts 4-5 months due to the weather.
These cars have a cubic capacity of only about 2,000 cubic feet (plus or minus
10%). So they only can handle 60-65 tons of coal when used in coal service
in the winter as much of the ARR fleet started doing when the Seward coal
move started. But they weigh nearly as much as a standard hopper so they are
not very efficient cars for coal handling.
You will also notice the long platforms on the ends of the cars and the relatively
short car body. This is a major pain for loading in motion like is done with
the Usibelli tipple and the current gravel terminals in Anchorage. It is really
easy to start the loading early or end late in trying to fill the car as full
as possible and spilling material on the end platforms.
So these cars were not well suited to the evolving needs of the ARR for a
flexible hopper car fleet. The ABI blue rapid discharge hoppers worked much
better for handling coal in the winter and flood loading both coal and stone.
I think the ARR had the TRAX cars on lease for three years in the mid-1980's
and then returned them, opting for more conventional hopper cars. Being a
specialized car designed specifically for stone they had a fairly high lease
rate as well.
There are a couple of photos in the Nicholas Deely book of one of these cars
in a freight train (probably handling coal) in the winter time.
On 11/16/04 Pat Durand adds, "Some years ago the Alaska Railroad leased a string of Ortner Three Bay Rapid Discharge hoppers. Here are two views showing both ends of the cars. Modelers note: Microtrains has just announced an N scale version Item #125010.
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The
Alaska Railroad has rostered a variety of hoppers over the years. On the 1931
Equipment Register 12A there is only reference to Coal Cars not hoppers. I
believe these were Hart Convertible Gons dedicated to coal service.
On Equipment Register 12G of 1963 there were four different number series of Twin Hoppers. At the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry is Hopper 60432 which through the weathered paint shows original number 6043 in white. This car was dedicated to the Alaska Railroad Power Plant in Healy and thus made the short trip from the Suntrana Tipple to the ARR power plant along side the main line in the Healy Yard.
There were only five cars in the series 6041 - 6045 as of 1963
and they were rated at 100000 lbs or 50 ton. The car body is 30'8" long
and 10'10" high with internal capacity of 1817 cu ft. Modelers note:
Stewart Hobbies Fishbelly 55 ton 6 panel 2 Bay Hopper in HO is a dead ringer
for 6043. Accurail also produces a very nice kit for the 2500 Series USRA
Twin Hopper that matches this car.
Prepared by Pat Durand
| 14XXX series hoppers |  |
| Anchorage Sand & Gravel (ASGX) #606 in Nenana. Paccar built this car only for this one time. They were ASGX 601-680. ARR managed the cars and eventually took ownership in the late 1980's in exchange for favorable rates for ASG. 4/83 |  |
| New (actually used) ex BCRail cylindrical hopper. 5/13/04 |  |
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| [7/25/06] AOK hoppers being used between the Pitman pit & Anchorage. Many of them were heavily worn & had major patch jobs on the inside sheets. | ||
See also "Dry bulk cars join Alaska service"
Engineering drawings:
© 1999-2008 John Combs unless otherwise noted
Page created 2/15/99 and last updated 3/12/08
